EVERY GENRE PROJECT - March 1 - Funkot
Genre of the Day - Funkot
Album of the Day - Bandung bergoyang by Barakatak (2003)
The argument between what is derivative and what is a clever appropriation is one that permeates modern music discourse. However, I see the first one, especially in a global musical context, as an extremely reductive notion. The sounds that transpire across borders do so not because of people’s desire to imitate, but because of their undeniable musical resonance. Dance music is one of those: if any musical facet is innate across several societies, it’s the desire to listen to something that makes us want to move. Hence why house and techno have reached far beyond their native cities of Chicago and Detroit respectively.
Today, we’re looking at an iconic Indonesian genre of the last twenty years, funkot. House took over the world in the ‘90s, growing out of the warehouses that had driven its formative stages in the American north. Perhaps the most famous example of this was house finding a loyal following among Europeans who put their own sweetly optimistic takes on it, but it eventually transmitted itself all the way to the Jakarta neighborhood of Glodok and took over in the early 2000s—hence the name funkot, with the suffix kota meaning urban. Maybe if I’d learned this earlier, I would’ve been accepted to that Indonesian language program. Sigh! Can’t cry about the things that one can’t change.
Anyway, funkot is an ecstatic, delirious take on house, one that’s voracious with samples from other Asian pop genres as well as homegrown and traditional musical strains, a solidly speedy BPM ranging from 180-220, and an emphasis on both complex drum patterns and melodies. Needless to say, the end result is insane. We’ve seen Indonesian music before with gamelan beleganjur, which I described as the equivalent of a musical defilibrator. Indonesian music combines distinctive scales such as the seven note scale pelog with complex, arresting percussion, so needless to say these elements transplanted into house and techno yield fascinating and exciting results.
Today’s album is excellent, and that’s coming from a bonafide music aficionado—okay, maybe not, but by now I’ve gone out of my way to listen to, research, and put my two cents on over fifty genres, happy March!—but I can not lie and say this isn’t in my top ten albums of all time now. I have a fond spot for Indonesian music in general, sure, but today’s album is pure dance excellence. There’s a rough quality to the mixing and audio that befits the organic syncretism of the music perfectly. Looking at music theory, though, it makes sense why funkot can transfix in a particular way other strains of house might not be able to. It ditches the typical, orthodox and commonly-accepted-as-necessity four-on-the-floor for faster Indoesnain koplo rhythms, bringing a unique domestic percussion style and groove to the tracks. They’re a mixing masterclass through and through, samples and interweaving traditional melodies moving through each other at supersonic speed, dabbling in a prism of EDM subgenres from the acid house nod on “Cinta 7 To”, the soul keys across “Gila Sendiri”, and the ecstatic diva house of “Maju Maju Maju”, all in Bahasa Indonesia. It’s glorious, exuberant, and unabashedly rooted in tried-and-true melodies; syncretic bangers for the ages.